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GOOD BROWN PUBLISHINGLEADAPRON
POLAROIDHOTEL PATRICK HOELCK
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FOREWORD :: ALL BETS ARE OFF
As I write this foreword at 3:15 AM in a motel room in the California Desert, an unruly storm tears through the night, howling with uncertainty and the fleetingness of the moment in a wild and existentially unsettling way. On the screen of the door, illuminated by a dim outside light, shadows move, and strange images appear ..uhu hu....
Some days ago I had met with Patrick Hoelck, my resolution was to ask him some questions about his new book of Polaroid pictures. I wanted to go right to the core of his intention, aiming at the theme of instant photography, long before digital technology, exploring that adventurous and fantastic aspect when Polaroid Instant Film was invented and presented by a certain Mr. Land. A medium now obsolete and passed by digital inventions on the fast technological super-highway. Back then it was a completely new and exciting strata. Invented in 1948, it became a huge discovery and success during the sixties. Most aficionados of instant photography remember the famous image of Andy Warhol holding a Polaroid camera with a picture half slipped out, showing his self-portrait. Who ever took a Polaroid picture got hooked (instantly). It played a poignant part in a changing world. Every photograph became a token of a new horizon, an object of desire of an instantaneous result. All postponement of the present seemed to be in the past and the moment to moment to be experienced in the act of taking a photo and watching in suspense the revelation of an always unique image with surprise, if not a little wonder. “Why Polaroid now?“ I asked Hoelck. His slanted eyes looked at me in grey-blue certainty, “It’s unpredictable! You never know what’s going to happen. All the other stuff I do is very intricate, the lighting, everything. I’m very much in control.” There it was, another level to it, the desire to loose control, to be surprised by the outcome of an artistic process! In the last moment of the film developing something else takes over, summoning one to be a witness of a subtle and simple, yet adventurous process, (disappointments included). It touches lightly the universal desire for the unknown and unknowable. The colors are forever changing, a different story appears, a mundane object suddenly seems to be shrouded in mystery, like the pink shoes in one of Patrick’s images. The mind plays its own movie upon seeing these images. Filling the gaps in unpredictable ways, they invite the observer to fantasize in erotic, defiant, gentle, proud, deformed, eccentric, tender, perverse, innocent, sexual... or whatever ways. And that seems to be the reason why Polaroid images have always held an undeniable and inescapable allure.
Hoelck’s images seem at first to be random, thrown together, an accidental assemblage, but they provide a narrative of our cultural landscape, a series on contemporary urban life. The expressions in most portraits are introspective and skeptical, the girls seem to undress for no-one, the ketchup bottle is broken, a monochromatic image postulates CHANGE, juxtapositions of empty industrial places and self-referential youth, vulnerable, naked, Vincent Gallo frozen as a silver-star, a girl stripping down her nylon-slip, a dial on a wall, a kiss radiating a golden light streak, Hoelck’s images are always modern and now.
Our conversation became actually something more like a declaration of love for Polaroid. Hoelck, who looks a bit like the long- lost son of Fidel Castro and some blond American woman, elaborates: “When Polaroid closed down, I went crazy I went to all the local stores and bought up all the stock that was left. I never want to be without the film. I must have five thousand packs. I love it. I want to put something out that is not so precise like my commercial work. I want to do something just for the fun of it. It’s very simple, I have the film lying around and I always shoot them and I want to share that. I really like that you don’t know the results... and all bets are off... it has it’s own identity. It has it’s own soul, I think.”
—Gisela Getty
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First Edition 2011
Images by Patrick Hoelck © 2011Foreword by Gisela Getty © 2011This edition by GOOD BROWN PUBLISHING and LEADAPRON © 2011
Edited by Jonathan Schilder Brown, Patrick Hoelck, and Suling PongScans by browndigital.net
Book Design by Suling Pongwww.madampixel.com
Published byGOOD BROWN [email protected]
LEADAPRON8454 Melrose Place, Los Angeles, CA 90069P 323.782.1888 E [email protected]
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-0-615-45039-1
01 Foreword by Gisela Getty02 Downtown Los Angeles, 199803 Friend, 199804 Alicia K, 200005 Teach Me Piano, 199606 The Struggle, 199507 The Struggle 2, 199509 Ketchup, 199210 All of Us Must, 199511 I Love S Caan, 200512 Outside We Dance, 199913 Outside 2, 199914 Show Me, 200615 Show Me 2, 200616 Ramona S, 200017 Lynn TAR, 200018 Valley Summer, 200219 Justin Sterling, 2001 20 Big Business, 200321 More Business, 200322 The Gallo, 200823 What’s the SENTENCE HOELCK?, 2008 24 Mike P, 200525 The Reader, 200526 POW TV, 200027 POW TV 2, 200029 Love Monica, 200730 Tony Ward Photographer, 199931 We Do So Much Together, 200432 Quick I Love You, 200833 Remember?, 200834 Shadi’s World, 200935 The R Hotel, 200936 A New Book, 200737 917 Glen, 200738 Natasha, 200739 Brown on Brown, 200641 Easy Pieces, 199742 What Do I Get?, 200643 More, 200744 Tony, 200745 Ward, 200746 London, 200047 Los Angles Changes, 1995 48 Vintage Arabs, 200649 Europeans, 2000
